Innocent Purpose
by yesimahuman
Summary: Prometheus always claimed an innocent purpose. Yeah, right.


A/N: Ok, I can definitively say this is the _first _Prometheus-centered fic on this site. Why? Because when I was checking to see if there were any others, Prometheus didn't turn up as a character.

Really? _Really?_ Three-fucking-thousand stories and _nobody _made one of these?

Innocent Purpose

Prometheus gave mankind fire with none but the best intentions. He risked his life to steal it from Apollo's chariot. He paid the price when Zeus chained him to a rock and had an eagle peck out his liver for all eternity.

It would be an outright lie to say that Prometheus was not bitter about the fact that mankind worshipped Zeus, and not him. Not even as a minor god. Not even as something worth noting. No, he was just part of a fairy tale warning little children not to disobey the Gods.

"_I helped you all!" _he wanted to scream. _"I saved you from the darkness- and look who you're worshipping, look who you're bowing down to! The very same people who would _keep _you in that darkness- and never help you out!"_

Prometheus' anger was tempered over time. He saw the horrible things man did with fire- first the torches, then the bronze, then the iron, then the steel, the swords, the spears, the muskets, the grenades, the assault rifles- mankind, it seemed couldn't get over using fire as a weapon. And Prometheus regretted giving it to them.

And then in the summer of 1945, his heart broke when mankind used his gift to kill tens of thousands of innocent people.

Yes- they swore never to do it again. Bullshit. Give them a couple of centuries and they would be right back at it. Prometheus resigned himself to the fact that giving mankind fire was a mistake. No matter what they accomplished with it, the bad would still remain.

Yet in his self-critical haste to find everything bad humanity was doing with fire, Prometheus overlooked all the _good._

xxx

"And what exactly do you want, Luke Castellan?" Prometheus asked.

"Well, Prometheus," Luke said, "I would think, that out of _all _the Titans, you would be the one clamoring for revenge the most."

"Heracles freed me eons ago, Son of Hermes," Prometheus said, taking pleasure from the look of anger that crossed Luke's face at the mention of his father. "I have no need for revenge."

Luke's face calmed, but Prometheus could still see the anger in his eyes. "_How long_ were you chained to that rock? Never mind, that's insignificant. The very fact that you _were _is justification enough for you to want to tear Olympus down stone by stone," he said.

"My punishment, as given by the Lord Zeus, was just and fair."

Luke began to laugh slowly, the scar on his face rippling with every short bark. "_Just and fair?_ Wake up!"

Luke snapped his fingers, and suddenly they were somewhere else.

Prometheus looked around. "Where are we?"

Luke shrugged. "Oh, nowhere of any importance. Just some random Californian highway. And now, we wait."

Prometheus decided to humor the young traitor. He was immortal. He had all the time in the world.

_Crash._

Prometheus didn't know how long he had been waiting for something to happen when he heard the awful sound. Surprised, he looked up to see two cars in a wreck on the side of the road.

"So what's the point of this, Castellan? To show me how my gift is causing more deaths?"

Luke smiled, looking down at Prometheus as if he was an ignorant child. "Actually, I'm here to show you exactly what you've done for humanity."

Sirens wailed in the distance. Luke perked up his head. "Hear that? That's an ambulance, created by fire."

The ambulance parked by the scene of the accident. Some men in white ran out and began to help the people out of the demolished cars. One person wasn't moving. Another man ran over and grabbed a defibrillator. "Clear!" he shouted, and suddenly the previously paralyzed man began to move.

"And that," Luke said, "is the magic of medicine you're seeing in action. And medicine was also created by fire."

"And so was the atomic bomb. What's your point?"

Luke began to laugh. "See that plane? See that car? See that telephone? See that road? Everything around you was created by fire- your gift to man, and all _you _can see is the bad we've done with it. See that dog? That's how we were like before fire!"

Prometheus fell silent.

"See that homeless person? _He _wouldn't exist if the Gods decided to _care _about humanity. _Look _at humanity. We're pitiful, and the Gods just _don't care._ Look what happened when you tried to give humanity a leg up, look what happened when you gave them the only divine breakthrough in history. Zeus chained you to a rock and had an eagle peck out your liver. And if it wasn't for Heracles, right no, that eagle would be sitting on your stomach thinking about how tasty Titan liver is. Is that fair?"

Anger that had slept dormant in Prometheus' mind awoke again.

xxx

He was doing this for mankind.

He was doing this so that the Gods would never again be able to hold mankind back.

Luke Castellan had convinced him completely that the Gods would never help humanity overcome its obstacles. Luke Castellan had shined light on the sorry situation of the world. Luke Castellan had shown Prometheus all the bickering that went on between the Gods- and the reasons why they would never, ever be able to do _anything _for humanity.

This, he convinced himself, was why he was fighting the Gods.

This and nothing else, he convinced himself.

Okay, maybe a bit of revenge. He admitted this to Percy Jackson.

What he _didn't _admit to himself was the fact that Luke Castellan had done one more thing.

He had made Prometheus realize this: "Wait a fucking second, I was just chained to a rock with a fucking eagle picking at my liver because the Gods just don't care about humanity?"

Luke Castellan, when guided by Kronos, was a very crafty man.

And because Prometheus had been set on the path for revenge- because he had been convinced that the punishment he had received was _not _fair- there was absolutely nothing at all that could make him change sides. No reasoning that Kronos would be a tyrant could deter him from his course. No pleas of mercy from any demigod could persuade Prometheus from helping Kronos crush them to the dirt.

Prometheus might have claimed that his intentions were innocent. Prometheus might have pleaded innocent because his purpose was such.

It would have been all useless. The blackness in his heart, planted by Luke Castellan, could never be washed away.

xxx

Review Please. Point out any grammatical or spelling errors- those are just embarrassing. Any gaping OOC? Tell me. The review button's right down there. You know that I know that you know that you see it.


End file.
